Casual workers getting ripped off: report

Many casual workers aren't getting paid much more than their permanent counterparts, and some are even making less, new research has found.

The peak body for unions claims the research has "blown apart the myth" from the business lobby that casuals are paid a significant premium for the loss of leave rights and job security.

A casual loading, usually of 25 per cent, is provided for in many awards and agreements but the Australian Council of Trade Unions paper says many casuals aren't receiving that premium.

The ACTU used Australian Bureau of Statistics data analysed by Joshua Healy, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Workplace Leadership.

In 2016, he compared median hourly wages for workers based on ordinary earnings and hours of work in 10 occupations which have the highest casual density and account for half of all employees in the classification.

In most of these occupations, there is a casual wage premium of about four to five per cent.

While school teachers have an average 22 per cent premium, of the other nine occupations six had a premium of two to five per cent and three got paid between three and six per cent less than their permanent counterparts.

Jobs with casual premiums of five per cent or less included labourers, cleaners, laundry workers, sales assistants, personal carers and assistants, hospitality workers and sales assistants.

Casuals with negative wage premiums worked as clerks, sport and fitness staff and packers and assemblers.

ACTU secretary Sally McManus said while some people choose casual work because they need flexibility, many preferred the paid leave and security of permanent work.

"People who are engaged as genuine casuals should receive a genuine premium for the lack of paid leave and job security," Ms McManus said on Monday.

"Big business has been rorting our system, using loopholes and underhanded arrangements to pay some casuals even less than permanent workers doing the same job."

The ACTU's paper says Australia has the highest proportion of temporary labour among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nations.

Overall rates of casual workers have risen from 15.8 per cent in 1984 to a peak of 27.7 per cent in 2004.

The figure dropped back to 23.5 per cent in 2012 before increasing to its current level of 25.1 per cent.